This book, the catalogue of the first retrospective of the work of the French Neoimpressionist artist Paul Signac to be held in nearly forty years, accompanies the 2001 exhibition organised by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Musee d'Orsay, Paris, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This long overdue tribute to Signac's power of expression and artistic influence features some two hundred paintings, drawings, watercolours, and prints from public and private collections worldwide. Fully illustrated in colour and discussed in individual entries, these works offer an unprecedented overview of Signac's fifty-year career. Signac's artistic development began with the luminous plein air paintings he made in the early 1880s which reveal the lessons he absorbed from Monet, Guillaumin, and other leading Impressionists. From 1884 until 1891 Signac's close association with Georges Seurat encouraged his explorations of colour harmony, contrasts, and Neoimpressionist technique. In the scintillating works of his maturity the rigours of Pointillism gave way to richly patterned, decorative colour surfaces. In a series of essays the exhibition's curators discuss Signac's richly interesting career from a variety of perspectives. John Leighton, Director of the Van Gogh Museum, provides an introductory essay that chronicles Signac's triumphs as a painter. The well-known Signac scholar Marina Ferretti Bocquillon focuses on Signac's achievements as a draftsman and watercolourist, and Sjraar van Heugten, Chief Curator of the Van Gogh Museum, summarises Signac's activity as a printmaker. Anne Distel, Chief Curator of the Musee d'Orsay, examines Signac's role as a promoter of his own works and those of his colleagues and describes a host of other activities - beyond painting - that engaged Signac's interest. The final essays in this volume shed new light on Signac's appreciation of the works of his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers - as evidenced in his artworks, in his published and unpublished writings, and in his private collection. Susan Alyson Stein, Associate Curator of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, examines the ways Signac understood the genius of such painters as Delacroix, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Bonnard, and Matisse. Marina Ferretti Bocquillon explores the Signac's role as a collector, providing a wealth of new information about the works he owned by fellow artists. Contributor Kathryn Calley Galitz is Research Associate in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Lavishly illustrated with comparative and documentary photographs, the volume includes an annotated chronology and a map that pinpoints the sites depicted in Signac's works.
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While Georges Seurat is the best-known pointillist, he wasn't the only one. Signac: 1863-1935 reintroduces a tireless advocate of neo-impressionism, a painter whose suburban imagery and leisured lifestyle belied his left-wing political views. Lively essays by scholars and curators portray different facets of Paul Signac's career. Virtually self-taught, he found the catalyst for his mature style in the small-scale brushwork of the slightly older Seurat, but replaced his serene, formal quality with overtly decorative patterning. As a yachtsman, Signac was drawn to marine subjects such as boats gliding on sparkling water at different times of day. After moving from Paris to Saint-Tropez in 1892, he took up watercolor, ideal for painting sunsets. Attempts at translating his political convictions into art (culminating with the monumental figure of a worker wielding a pickax) met with failure. But Signac's brilliance as a colorist is indisputable, infusing each of the 223 plates in this handsome book. --Cathy Curtis
From Library Journal
This volume, which accompanies a traveling exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is the first major overview of neoimpressionist artist Paul Signac in nearly 40 years. Tracing Signac's artistic development, the catalog effectively examines the artist's close relationship with fellow neoimpressionist Georges Seurat and shows how his interest in color, line, aesthetic harmony, and subjective experience in painting developed. The essays, written by American and French Signac scholars, demonstrate that the painter at first emulated Seurat's artistic style but then came to use more color and looser brushstrokes, and how as Signac worked more and more in the medium of watercolor, he produced some of his most successful works. Signac emerges as a theorist and critic through excerpts from his book, D'Eug ne Delacroix au neo-impressionisme, in which he explained Neoimpressionism to the public. The artist's political motivations are also observed he always stood against official bourgeois conventions and in favor of liberal causes as are his efforts to support the arts in general. With beautiful illustrations and valuable, if not especially groundbreaking, information on Signac, this volume is recommended for all libraries that collect art books. Sandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Coll., MA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
LIGHT--COLOR--HARMONY: PAUL SIGNAC: MASTER NEO-IMPRESSIONIST...,
By Sébastien Melmoth (Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paul Signac, 1863-1935 (Hardcover)
Signac is too often overlooked in turn-of-the-century studies. He was a master Neo-Impressionist whose personal style was somewhere between Seurat and Van Gogh.
This is a very fine tome on Signac, a good value for the price. Equally good for students of the period, and an exceptionally nice "coffee table book" as well.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible art,
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This review is from: Paul Signac, 1863-1935 (Hardcover)
I saw an exhibit of these almost psychedelic masterpieces in a museum and have been hooked ever since. These paintings are masterful and won't bore you for a moment.
I've only read ~15 pages of the text, it's typical for a book like this
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Artist Fabulous Book,
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This review is from: Paul Signac, 1863-1935 (Hardcover)
When you get around to all the important Impressionist artists you realize how many talented and creative men and women were out there. They changed the way art was viewed by the world. Paul Signac is finally in this book getting his due. As an artist and museum goer it took many years before I fully appreciated his talents. A show several years ago at the Metropolitan Museum in New York brought his works along with several other slightly lesser known IMpressionist to the forefront. The book fully captures the essence of Pail Signac.
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